James Franco Defends Risky Underwear Selfie

May 09, 2014 18:02:50 GMT

The 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' actor compares his 'provocative' picture of a nearly-naked himself to 'that Britney Spears shaved head moment.'

James Franco explained the "provocative" selfie that shows him reaching his hand inside his underwear nearly exposing himself. During a visit to the "Late Show with David Letterman", he said he took the nearly-nude photo and posted it on Instagram just for fun. "It's what the people want!" he said.

"There's a lot to get straight here," the "Palo Alto" actor said before joking, "I don't even know if we have time." He then added, "But to me, it's just a fun thing. It's something I don't put a ton of thought into, but it gets a lot of attention. I have a lot of followers on Instagram."

When David Letterman showed him the risky picture that had since been deleted from the social media, Franco admittedly said, "Awful." So why did he do it? "Like that Britney Spears shaved head moment, where it's sort of like, 'All right, you want me? Here you can have me, but I am going to be really ugly,'" he reasoned. "You know what I mean?"

"First of all let me just say there is not a person in this room who hasn't had their hand in their own pants," the host remarked, to which his guest argued, "It's not like I'm putting that on billboards. Ostensibly, Instagram is for my fans. But now all the bloggers are following me on there so they'll just take it and use my images for whatever they want."